The Last Checkout

by Peter Besson

  Morton stopped. He took a deep breath, fighting the urge to strangle that useless drunkard until his face turned purple and blue. He regained control of himself, and, very deliberately, wiped his shoe on Henry’s pant leg. The leather shiny again, he straightened his tie, realigned his chin with the appropriate degree of haughtiness, and stalked out of the room.

  In the entry hall, he heard the muffled sound of a gunshot from somewhere deep inside the hotel. Probably from down below in Huntley’s basement where he kept his supplies. He had a room in the back with a rough concrete floor, sloping inward to the large drain, which made it quite easy and convenient to hose down. The room was supposed to be soundproof but, like everything else in Hotel Terminus, it didn’t live up to its name. But still, the soft ‘pop’ did put a smile on Morton’s lips.

  One less problem. Another small step toward his goal.

  Morton was headed for his office to investigate more ways, legal or not, to increase his revenue stream when he spotted a black limousine pull up outside the entrance. Douglas Forlan III bounded out of the car and plowed through the double glass doors, followed immediately by a heavyset bodyguard who had trouble keeping up with him.

  This day was turning out much better than he could have ever imagined, Morton thought. Getting rid of the sad display of Mr. Aubrey had been, if not pleasant, at least a relief, but Mr. Forlan waltzing toward him with an urgency that begged to be exploited—that, Morton knew, that was special, and he let a smile stretch his face to the extent it was still able to.

  It was tight, but it felt good.

  ***

  Morton’s manicured fingers drummed a soothing rhythm on the desktop. Steady, calculated. It was enjoyable, the dark polished teak of his desk, its heavy solidity, the substantial heft of it. His whole office was a showroom of exotic woods, with Carpathian elm for the shelves and Brazilian mahogany chairs. If it was expensive, it seemed to have a place in Morton’s office. Wood paneling on the back wall rounded out the aura of being surrounded by money.

  Douglas Forlan III could appreciate that. Morton appeared to speak his language—or, if he wasn’t fluent, he would at minimum understand it. Douglas sat across from Morton, who resided behind his desk like a captain steering a massive ship. Douglas felt a headache snake its way upwards through his skull. Morton would not stop that infernal drumming with his fingers, pretending to be in deep thought, when there was no need for theatrics. Douglas had asked a simple question that required a plain numerical answer, but here was Morton, stalling as if computing pi to a hundred decimal places in his head. This wasn’t Douglas’ first rodeo. He could see straight through Morton’s money-hungry soul and knew what he would say next, and the predictability of it all was ever so tiring.

  “My hands are tied,” Morton said at last, and Douglas nodded, impatient for him to go on. “There are rules, regulations. Mountains of red tape. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork involved.”

  “Stop. Pretend I understand how this works. You tell me how difficult it is—no, impossible—and we haggle and I threaten to walk away and you say ‘oh, but wait, there might be a way, but it’ll cost’ and we haggle some more and it takes way too long and I don’t want to do any of that. I want to get to the part where we make this work. I want to get to the end. The number.” Douglas had his eye fixed on Morton throughout his whole speech. “So, how much?”

  Morton looked hurt, as if the mere mention of money were distasteful to him, as if this were the first time he had even thought of such a base thing. What kind of man do you take me for, sir?

  Nonetheless, he took a piece of paper, pretended to run through some mental arithmetic, weighing difficult decisions he would never have to make, considering risks he wouldn’t dream of taking. Finally he scribbled some numbers on the paper, folded it up neatly, and slid it across the desk.

  Douglas, who had been watching the theatrics with a stone-faced expression, unfolded the paper. He took a sharp breath in. As hard as he tried not to, he couldn’t help but be surprised at Morton’s greed. The number he’d written down was doable, sure, but it was an amount that Douglas, as rich as he was, would actually notice. He had to hand it to Morton. He knew exactly where his pain threshold lay.

  Douglas crumpled the paper in his hand. “Make sure she’s ready to go.”

  ***

  Huntley was sitting with his back to the window in Room 516, thrown into deep shadow by the dying light outside. His face was a mask of darkness. So were his thoughts.

  ‘It was just a mistake,’ she’d said. ‘I know,’ Huntley’d answered. ‘I don’t want to die.’ ‘I know.’ ‘What am I going to do?’ ‘There’s only one thing to do, miss.’ ‘But…’ And her words had failed her. Everything had failed her.

  Even Huntley.

  He could still see her, sitting on her bed, dissolving into a river of tears, and him standing by her side, unsure of what to do with his hands. They seemed strange appendages at the end of his arms, hanging from their shoulder sockets, altogether useless at this moment. He should have reached out, he knew now. He should have reached out and touched her on the shoulder. On the arm. Or just a hand. But touch her and let her know she wasn’t alone. That what lay before her had to be done, but he’d be there for her. With her.

  He’d replayed that exchange in his mind countless times. She was only a timid girl with uncontrollable emotions raging inside her. Suicide wasn’t the answer. It rarely was. She sat before him, her shoulders shaking, tears pooling on the carpet between her feet, her hair stringy with snot, and he stood, motionless, his arms and, he believed, he himself useless.

  Huntley had never questioned his job before. His role in the machine that devoured people tired of living, that spat out dead bodies to be shipped off to factory-sized crematoriums spewing large columns of smoke into the atmosphere—none of it ever gave him pause. He provided a service, he told himself; he was the last bit of courage people needed, a facilitator of karma. It was simply a reboot, after all. You step off for a little while and wait for your turn to get back on the wheel of life. He’d never had any reason to doubt the official, government-approved slogan: Reboot the new you! If life was so unbearable, why not spin the wheel? See what comes up? And sometimes Huntley had to do the spinning himself. That’s all it was. A nudge.

  He’d never lost sleep over what he did, but after he’d cut the young girl’s arteries and held her wrists, tight so she wouldn’t feel a thing, and he felt the blood gush through his fingers and bloom red in the bathtub, as with every beat of her heart she grew weaker, more tired, but, as he was hoping, also more peaceful… after he set her head gently against the slope of the tub and held her gaze, steady as could be, and he saw the light in her eyes dim, her face slacken into an expression of everlasting wonder, and he felt the last of her drain out, the thing that had made her the person she was, until nothing was left but the shell that had held her… after he’d shared that death, a crack appeared in his convictions. He tried to tell himself there was nothing he could have done, that this was a death like any other, but at the same time, he knew it hadn’t been. He’d caught himself pressing harder on her wounds, clamping down tighter than he had to. For the pain, he told himself, but knew it was more than that. It was like he was struggling to close the wounds he’d opened, but as much as he tried, her life flowed between his fingers.

  That night, lying in bed at home, his wife of ten years next to him, their son, a boy with the bright earnestness and shining eyes of the young, down the hall in his bedroom, kicking free of his blankets the way he always did, and the house heavy with sleep, Huntley found himself awake, staring at the ceiling. He was unable to shake the image of tears pooling on the carpet, or the sense of warm life running between his fingers. He’d seen plenty in his work—any imaginable deformation and destruction of human flesh, a river of tears and blood and other bodily fluids—but never, until now, had he had the impression that he’d crossed a line. That he’d been culpable in a crim
e. Not a legal crime, but a moral one. He reassured himself over and over that he’d been powerless to change anything. That it was imperative to the system that this was the case. The only way the Last Resorts worked was by complete, rigid adherence to the rules. Otherwise, weekend suicide tourists would check in, toy with the idea of ending it all, but think better of it the next day in the sober, cold light of morning and simply check out, back to their former lives where, on Monday, at the water cooler, they’d brag about their adventure, and how staring death in the face had given them a brand new outlook on life. It was invigorating, they’d say, everyone should try it at least once. The system would get clogged and come to a grinding halt, and that could never be allowed to happen. They were providing a service, a valuable service to a world on the brink of collapse.

  So why did this feel so wrong?

  Ever since that night, it seemed his perception had shifted, as if the lens on a movie projector had been misaligned for years and then had, by accident, been knocked back into place, and everything appeared different.

  Clearer. Sharper.

  The glossy polish of propaganda and well-meaning benevolence had worn off at the edges, and Huntley was able to detect disquieting harsh undertones. Profit, greed, and self-serving sanctimoniousness, first mere glimpses, began to shine through, and doubt, a previously unknown experience for Huntley, started to make itself a home in his heart. He still believed he helped people. If asked, he could honestly say he was of service, that he eased unnecessary suffering and, yes, did his part for a more livable planet, but since the girl in room 516 had checked out, a nagging doubt had nestled into his breast as to whom he was truly helping. He was afraid to follow this doubt, to unravel the thread and find himself staring at a truth he would never be able to live with, a truth where it was all a sham—the government studies proclaiming rebirth as a fact, the never-ending churning over of bodies and souls as the only solution to a dying planet, the incomprehensible laws governing suicide and the impossibility of a second chance—all of it a magician’s trick, a sleight of hand to stoke the fires and fatten the wallets of a shadowy elite. If that was the reality, could he look his young son in the eye and tell the boy what his father had done? How he’d been nothing more than a game warden, culling the weak, eliminating the sick?

  Huntley didn’t know. He sat in room 516, regretting drawing the razor blade through her flesh. Regretting not being able to hold back her life. Regretting what he thought he had to do.

  Perhaps regretting all the deaths.

  He didn’t know.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PAST & PRESENT

  Nikki hadn’t seen one of these for years. Many years. The sight of it unleashed a torrent of emotions she couldn’t even begin to name. From utter joy to thorough dread, her feelings ran violently up and down as though her emotional strings were being plucked by a mad harpist.

  She stood smack in the middle of the sidewalk, the crowd of people flowing around her like a river around a stubborn boulder, but she wouldn’t move, her eyes locked on the large building in the distance. Nestled in between larger, taller buildings, and overlooking a small open plaza, it had been neglected between frenzied bursts of building activity that had thrown up a curtain of concrete around it until it had vanished from sight and memory.

  An ice skating arena.

  It was slowly crumbling, weeds cracking through the pavement here and there, but neon lights still flickered in defiance of the general decay. The ICE PALACE. Or rather, with a couple letters burnt out, the IC PALA E.

  “Hey.” Ansel swam through the crowd toward her. “You just scared the hell out of me, thank you very much. What were you thin—” He studied her more closely. “What’s the matter?” He followed her look. Saw the ice skating rink. “Oh.”

  Nikki’s eyes shone with tears that wouldn’t fall. She smiled, but it was an uncertain smile, like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud cover. She wanted to go, but was rooted in place. Everything about her was tense but trembling, rigid yet in turmoil; a frozen contradiction.

  “Come on.” Ansel grabbed her hand. She resisted, but only for a moment. Then she let herself be dragged toward the arena, giving in gladly, relieved to have the decision made for her.

  ***

  The door banged open, the sound echoing through the wide hall. Curiously, the lights were on, picking out the ice rink from the surrounding darkness. A single Zamboni, driven by a red-faced man in a parka, drew its lonely circles on the ice, smoothing it until it glistened with a polished sheen.

  Ansel surveyed the rink. Nobody else here. Only them and the solitary Zamboni rumbling over the ice. Ansel turned to Nikki, ready to tell her he’d go talk to the man resurfacing the skating rink, but she didn’t see him anymore. Her eyes were clear, wide, open, reflecting the white shining ice before her. Everything else around was mere background noise, the inconsequential clatter of everything not ice. She dropped Ansel’s hand and walked toward the skating rink, gliding as if in a dream. Her hand touched the Plexiglass circling the ice, and with the touch of the cold acrylic came a shock of memories and emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. She sighed deeply to let it pass through her, so she wouldn’t drown in hurt and tears. How many hours had she spent in that white coldness, rapturously lost in a swirl of sound and movement? It was the only place she ever recalled experiencing anything close to happiness, or if not that, maybe just simple contentment. Nothing had mattered in that oval—not who she was or wanted to be, not what she hated or loved; not the overbearingness of her father nor the absence of a mother who had abandoned her family and embraced the bottle; not the spitefulness and cruelty and kindness of her school friends, not the indifference of everyone else; not her inability to understand herself for who she was and how she looked, not the gathering dark clouds in her heart, nor the desires, wishes, dreams, fears, compulsions, or bad habits of her or anyone else. There had been nothing but music and grace and white cold.

  Nikki drifted along the length of the rink, trailing her hand over the glass as if afraid to let go of something precious, rediscovered after years of being lost. The ice. It was beckoning.

  Ansel headed across the ice, on an interception course with the machine running in ever tighter circles. He held up his hand.

  “Hey!”

  The Zamboni rumbled to a stop before Ansel. The red-faced man riding it, puffed up in a large jacket and ear muffs, cranked the brake and glowered at Ansel. “What are you—how did you get in here?” he growled.

  “Door was open.” Ansel pointed to the idling Zamboni. “Can you turn that thing off?”

  With a theatrical flourish, the red-faced man checked his watch, glared at Ansel, checked his watch again, threw up his arms and, with a heavy sigh, turned the ignition switch. The motor died with a cough.

  “What?”

  “You think you could let us get on the ice for a bit?”

  The glowering only got worse. “What? Why? Who ‘we’?”

  Ansel pointed back to where Nikki was trailing the perimeter of the rink. “Well, not ‘we.’ Her.”

  “Get out of my way.” The man reached for the ignition switch. “I’ve got a job to do.”

  “Hang on.” Ansel stepped closer, arms raised, as though trying to pacify a skittish animal likely to bite. “Just listen.”

  The man sighed again, only louder. “Make it quick.”

  “Look at her. Do you see this? This is a dream of hers.”

  “My dream is to finish my rounds, but, there you are.”

  “Let her skate for a bit. It would mean the world to her.”

  “No can do. I’ve got a corporate party coming in less than thirty. Can’t have nobody running around on my ice. Do you have any idea how much it costs to open this sucker here?”

  “Just ten minutes.” Ansel held up his wrist. The counter on the armband was marking off time. Forty-three minutes left. “In a couple of days she’ll be dead, but you’ve got the
chance to do something kind for her. One of the last times anybody can do that.”

  The red-faced man set his jaw. “You guys made your choice.”

  “We did. But you’ve got the privilege to give her a beautiful gift.”

  “How’s any of this my responsibility?”

  “Because you’re here. And she’s there.”

  She remembered herself, but it wasn’t really her that she recalled. It was a different her, not only younger, but purer, more excitable, sensitive, more honest with life itself. The dull curtain she felt trapped behind hadn’t been drawn across her experiences yet. Her recollections sparkled with light, infused by a warmth she wasn’t sure her life had ever possessed. There had to be bad memories, of times where training was a chore, of painful falls and purple-black bruises, of dissatisfied trainers and a scowling father, of the relentless pressure to nail the triple axel, but if those memories existed, she failed to dredge them up. All she could recall was the way the cool air brushed her skin as she skated, the shocking cold spray of ice when she braked to a sudden stop, the sense of weightlessness while she glided across the rink, arms stretched out as if to fly—and somehow, that’s what she’d done: flown. Left friction, gravity, the rest of physics behind as she’d skimmed over the ice, a being lighter than air, happy.

  Suddenly, a pair of skates dangled before her eyes. She snapped to. Back to the here and now. The world of crap and suicide. And a pair of ice skates.

  “I guessed your size.” Ansel grinned, holding the skates up.

  Nikki shook her head in bewilderment. Where did he… what was… where…? But it became clear when she saw the red-faced man in the back, climbing the stairs to the control booth. She glanced back at the skates, Ansel’s expectant grin.